Even the asteroid mining companies will initially focus on servicing satellites with fuel and parts. While Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries have announced various strategies for reaching asteroids in the inner solar system in order to extract metals such as iron, nickel, cobalt and platinum, both are now talking about processing asteroid materials in space to create propellants and parts and moving on to precious metal sales down the road. A mission to Mars would be cheaper, for example, if the fuel to reach it were added in space from the volatiles in asteroids. DSI will also offer a space-based 3-D printer called a MicroGravity Foundry, which would grind up asteroids, separate out the useful bits and fuse them into manufactured goods, essentially “printing out” replacements for broken parts or creating new ones.

David Gump, vice chairman of DSI, says Planetary Resources was initially all about the metals, like platinum, but the company “recently snapped back to reality and adopted our [current] approach, which is that the volatiles and metals for in-space markets is the logical way to go.”

“The resources from asteroids will be primarily sold into markets in space, because that’s where everything is very expensive,” says Gump.

It costs about $17 million per ton to get anything from Earth up to a high orbit, Gump says. For a communications satellite about to burn out of fuel, that’s a lot of money. He estimates that these satellites earn their owners $5 million to $10 million a month, so if their lives can be extended by a year, they could earn the communications companies an additional $50 million to $100 million a year.

Gump estimates that a business in refueling those satellites would generate more than a billion a year, since 10 to 15 satellites a year are lost when they run out of fuel. If you can extract the propellant and building materials from resources already in space, it would be less expensive and more profitable than to import them from the ground, he says.

“There are many billionaires now doing great work on the cost of launch vehicles. The next thing to tackle is the cost of staying in space once you get there,” Gump says. “We’re all about addressing, ‘OK, you’re here. Now how do you begin to live off the land?’”

Aside from fuel and parts, the company plans to generate revenues by gathering data for the space agencies and testing new parts in space. If you put half a billion dollars into the launch and construction of a spacecraft, you don’t want some million-dollar component to tank your entire mission, Gump says, so you use an old, trusted component that you’re confident won’t fail you rather than something new. DSI will put new components in its robotic missions to test them out and give them so-called “heritage,” to make sure they perform exactly as predicted.

The company also plans to sell corporate sponsorships, which, like NBA box seats, will give companies access to space as a way of rewarding their best customers. For $1 million to $10 million, companies can give their customers VIP seats at mission control during launches, or customers can take photos when the ship lands on an asteroid or even selfies of themselves with the Earth in the background as the ship is in transit.

But the risks inherent in these projects are high. Furthermore, they could have unanticipated economic consequences. If a lot of platinum were found in space, for instance, it would likely drive down global platinum markets when it’s brought to Earth.

There’s little law on who can claim objects in space. The 1967 Outer Space Treaty declares space is open for exploitation, so long as “states” clean up their mess and leave no contamination or dangerous objects that could harm others. But people might still raise questions if, say, a company goes in and claims ownership of the mineral rights on an asteroid.

“I’m sure by the time company X goes up there and lands on an asteroid and company Y starts taking photos, lawyers will be wrangling about whether they have a right to do that,” says Louis Friedman, co-founder of the Planetary Society, an international organization of space enthusiasts.

There aren’t really such things as specific tax laws for profits from asteroid mining. But if the space companies are domiciled in the U.S., it does not matter where the income is earned: The profits would be taxable in the United States, regardless. Well-heeled and well-advised investors may try to save taxes by domiciling the mining company offshore, along with its operations and equipment. In such cases, the U.S. tax authorities may not be entitled to collect anything, says Bob Jason, a partner at Nigro Karlin Segal & Feldstein LLP.